Notes

16. 30-day challenges: Touch three times

After having successfully become an early riser, J Wynia has set a new challenge for the next 30 days: read 100 pages a day.

I don't have much of a print backlog because I read quickly and
regularly, so I'll set myself a different challenge: to touch three
people. I will initiate three messages a day.

It's too easy for me to fall into the habit of just reacting to
whatever mail I get, writing only when I receive a note (and sometimes
not even then). I want to change that. I want to proactively reach
out.

I'm learning that I don't have to rush through my schoolwork or my
research, and that the time I take to enjoy people's company will be
worth far more in the end.

15. Lifehacking your groceries

One of the coolest things about having
delicious:lifehacks in my inbox
is turning up all the craziest lifehacking tips. Today's treasure is
about lifehacking your groceries by using index cards to keep track of ingredients, simplifying a week of shopping and cooking. _And_ it comes with index card templates!

ここ数年、コンピューターは仕事に限らず広く利用されるようになりました。 Recently, the increasing diversity of computer use has extended far beyond the realms of the office.

14. How to fold a shirt

Clair passed me a link to that nifty tutorial on folding shirts. I wonder if the trick works with the long-sleeved blouses I like wearing. See, _that's_ why I post all of these personal stories online. People share useful tips and stories. =) Thanks, everyone!

It turns out I'm not the only one with laundry problems, too. Numerous
people have written in with their own misadventures and tips. Here's what I've learned so far:

Don't mix colored shirts with white ones. (Yup, I knew that. Good thing I learned it from other people's mistakes...)

Use mesh bags for socks. (My mom will bring me a few.)

If you fold your laundry right after you take it out of the dryer, you don't really need to iron your clothes.

13. Introducing the Hipster PDA

"I've found the perfect PDA," I gushed. My friends perked up. Knowing
how much of a geek I am, anything I was that crazy about was bound to
be interesting. They leaned over and watched as I reached into my bag
and brought out...

... my Hipster PDA.

"SACHA?!"

Introducing the Hipster PDA

One of the hottest topics in the productivity blogosphere right now is
the Hipster PDA, a surprisingly effective low-tech way to
organize your life. Grab a pack of 3"x5" index cards and a fold-back
clip and you're set to go!

What's so cool about the Hipster PDA?

Gets rid of worries. You don't have to worry about running out of
battery during a critical meeting. You can drop it and it will still
work. Even if you dunk it in water, you'll still be able to recover
your data.

Grows along with you.
Don't be constrained by software or hardware limitations! You can
easily experiment with different ways of planning, and you can expand
your Hipster PDA's memory simply by buying another pack of index cards
at your nearest bookstore.

Helps you stay focused. The Hipster PDA helps you stay focused
and on-track by not supporting addictive games like Tradewinds. To
help you pass the time, the Hipster PDA comes with a few built-in
two-player games like Tic-tac-toe and Hangman.

Organizes real-life data. Receipts? Business cards? Movie
tickets? No problem! Just tuck them into the fold-back clip and
process them when you get home.

Beams anything to anyone. You can easily "beam" information
to other people--just scribble a note and give it to them. 3x5 index cards don't crumple easily
and can easily be shared with other people no matter what mobile device they use.

Here's what you can do with your own Hipster PDA:

Get a good pen or mechanical pencil. Keep it with your Hipster PDA at all times.

Write down one task per index card. You can write down subtasks and notes there as well. Rip up the task card up after completing the task for a satisfying finish.

Alternatively, divide your tasks into projects and write down your tasks. Check the tasks off as you finish them.

Scribble notes and ideas down on index cards.

Write down a month calendar so that you can easily see when you have appointments.

Print important contact information on an index card. You can probably fit 50 names and phone numbers. Good backup if your phone is out of battery or gets lost.

12. Office supplies shopaholic

My name is Sacha Chua and I'm an office supplies shopaholic. I find it
nearly impossible to pass a bookstore without checking out the index
cards and notebooks in stock.

Today I bought two small plastic cases.

A good size for scrapbook material: photos, receipts, tickets... No
more digging around in my bag for things to scrapbook!

(Hmm. Thinking about it now, I could have also survived with a
Ziplock(tm) packet.)

Okay. Maybe I can store art materials in it. Or cards. Yeah, it's a
good size for stationery. That's it.

(You know you have it bad when you think of reasons _after_ you buy
the thing...)

On my way out of the school supplies stand, I found my fingers
inexplicably rifling through the notebooks on display. I picked up a
Stradmore notebook composed of eight thin notebooks held together with
pins. Here's the side view:

A light bulb went off in my head. This is perfect for journal-writing!
I can keep a journal along with my work notes (eliminating the need
for a separate album) and then simply re-file them. If I use a
mini-notebook for letters to Dominique, I can mail the whole
mini-notebook to him when I'm done.

I had a hard time deciding between a small notebook that could fit in
my purse and a medium-size notebook that gave me more room to write,
but I eventually decided on the medium-size notebook.

Why?

Because it had "girl" written all over it.

Really.

Of course, _after_ I bought it, I reasoned that larger mini-notebooks
would be more efficient to store and mail. (Right.)

家にはパソコンが５台あるが、内２台は役立っていない。 It is not useful though there are five personal computers in the house.

11. Task management with Emacs: Text files

With the wealth of code available for Emacs and the ease of
customization it provides, you're certain to find a task management
tool that fits the way you think. Over the next few days, I'll provide
a quick run-through of the methods I've tried out.

The simplest way to get started with Emacs for task management is to
keep your TODOs in a plain text file, like ~/TODO. You can keep this
text file in any format you want. To make it easier for you to see
what you need to do, you can keep active TODOs near the top and
completed tasks near the bottom.

If you load your TODO file every time you start up Emacs, then you'll
be sure to check it every day. Put the following line in your ~/.emacs
to have it automatically loaded when you start:

(find-file "~/TODO")

You'll also want to make it easy to open during an Emacs session. If
your TODO file is just a keyboard shortcut away, you'll find it easier
to keep all of your reminders in the file. Here's a snippet that shows
the TODO file in the current window.

See? Emacs is fun and easy to configure. You can store your tasks in a
plain text file and then add keyboard shortcuts to make your tasks
easier to manage.

There are many sophisticated task management packages for Emacs. I'll
write about one of them tomorrow. In the meantime, if you want to find
out what task manager I _really_ like using, you can check out
PlannerMode! =)

10. Colored index cards

I love posting my productivity ideas because every time I do so, I get
comments suggesting even better ways to do things. Today's tip comes
from Christopher Allan Webber, whose
colored index cards are leaps and bounds ahead of my deck of
plain white index cards. He has some cool ideas here!

He uses colored notecards to separate his notes into categories.

Yellow

schedule & project cards

Red

todo cards (or just stuff I should copy to planner-mode)

Blue

idea cards

Green

expenses (writing down stuff to copy to my ledger file later)

He also uses cards that are lined on just one side. On the lined side of schedule & project cards, he
writes down:

Photography

Mon

5/9

Lab

Wed

5/11

Critique of Assignment II & I (pics don't have to be dry - must by Wednesday)

Mon

5/16

Field trip

.

.

Assignment #2 dry-mounted

On the back, he keeps a TODO list. When a task needs to be done
multiple times--for example, preparing a print of a picture--he adds
extra checkboxes before the task.

I think he writes down non-project-related TODOs and random notes on
red cards, which are easy to pick out in the pack. Right now, I jumble
them all together on white index cards. I'll try keeping the front
half of the deck for tasks and the back half for notes.

Green cards help him keep track of his expenses. I keep receipts in
front of my index cards using the handy fold-back clip, although an
organized table view would be pretty cool.

I don't know where he managed to find lined-on-one-side 3x5 colored
index cards. I guess bookstores in other countries are better stocked.
On the other hand, I found 3x5 organizer refills, so I'm not
absolutely deprived.

He was bemused by my mention of "two pages of month templates from a
3x5 day planner". If you crack open a pack of 3x5 organizer refills,
you'll get year, month, and day views. Normally a single month would
span two pages, but if you're using a planner where month views
haven't been labeled "January", "February"--in short, blank ones--then
you can use one page to represent one month. If you don't have
organizer refills handy, simply print the numbers 1 to 15 down one
side of an index card and 16 to 31 on the other. Leave space at the
top for the month name, and space beside the numbers for appointments.

He also had this interesting anecdote to relate about a friend's way
of planning.

"Oh, I gave up keeping track of to do lists," she sighed. "These days
I just write everything on my mirror with a dry-erase marker, so when
I groggily stumble into my bathroom in the morning I go, 'OH SHIT! I
HAVE *THAT* TO DO TODAY!'"

I should do that with a random Japanese quote of the day. I'll write
it down the day before, then groggily try to read it in the morning.
Or I can scribble my Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals (superb teaching and
quality assurance for computer science education, and strategy
coaching for life planning (must find better way to summarize these
things!)) on my ceiling at home. Ooooh. My ceiling is low enough for
me to do that...

9. Profiling Your Customer

People are often thrilled by the fact that I try to keep track of
their interests and inclinations. I avidly file away tidbits I learn
while listening to them talk, but I'm not yet used to asking people
for more details or engaging in small talk. I'm starting to think that
there's more to small talk than just passing time, though. I guess
asking about all of these things makes good business sense.

re: your post on keeping track of people and their interests - did you ever hear of the "Mackay 66" ? A guy here in the US wrote a book about selling, and he requires his saleman to keep a "66" on each customer - 66 things you should know about them. See http://www.mackay.com/howhelp/Mac66.html - at least 1 thru 57 is useful for friends too.

8. How I use my Hipster PDA

After all my experiments with wearable computing
using a one-handed chording keyboard and a speech synthesizer,
I've found that the most portable device for me is still a 3x5 pack of index cards bound with a fold-back clip.
Jokingly dubbed the "Hipster PDA" elsewhere on the Net, this low-tech device is surprisingly flexible and easy to use.
I use mine to keep track of tasks and random notes for later entry into my online planner.

My Hipster PDA is composed of:

a colored index card with my contact information

my inbox: cards with notes on them that haven't been entered into the computer

two pages of month templates from a 3x5 day planner

a year calendar for 2005 and 2006

my archive: index cards that have already been entered but might still be useful

a colored index card with yellow sticky notes

a stack of blank index cards

a fold-back clip holding all of these things together

a black signpen or a mechanical pencil tucked into the fold-back clip

One of the things I've found much easier to do with my 3x5 pack of
cards than with a PDA or a Franklin-Covey planner is to keep track of
get-togethers. When my friends and I schedule our next get-together, I
lay the month templates out so that I can see the next 30 days at a
glance. This is difficult to do with a PDA because PDA screens are
small. A Franklin-Covey planner would probably be more organized, but
I like being able to lay things out side-by-side instead of flipping
through pages.

When I need to jot something down, I flip the deck and write on the
last card. After I finish one side of the card, I turn it over, clip
it, and write on the other side. When the whole card is full, I move
it into my inbox.

Index cards are handy because it's easy to give information away to
other people. Paper gets crumpled and business cards can disappear
into the chaos of a purse or a bag. An index card is big and bright.
I'm thinking of replacing half of my white cards with brightly-colored
cards so that people can easily find information I give them.

I'm planning to do other things with my pack of 3x5 index cards. For
example, I can write my projects on the cards. Reviewing these cards
will reinforce these goals in my mind and remind me to keep making
progress.

Index cards totally rock.

新しいコンピューターは旧型よりも１０倍速い。 The new computer is ten times as fast as the old one.

7. Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals

Revolutionize computer science education by making it highly
individualized and experiential.

Become a world-famous expert on creating systems for planning one's
life. Instead of pushing a particular methodology, I'd like to work
with people's current ways of planning, suggesting improvements and
software/hardware to support their life.

The first person I talked to was J. Angelo Racoma,
an old friend from my BBSing days. After chatting about blogging, talk turned
to what we're both up to. He told me about his work at http://i.ph . I told him
about my BHAGs.

It turned out that his wife is into tutoring, and one of the things
they're planning to do in the future is set up a tutoring portal to
help students, parents and tutors find each other. Neato. That looks
like a great fit for what I want to do. =)

As I explained my BHAG for teaching and training to him, I realized
that one of the things I really, really, really care about is quality
assurance for teachers and tutors. I firmly believe that it's not just
about technical knowledge, but it's also about teaching and
communication skills. I don't think we're paying enough attention to
that, and I think that's a compelling sales point.

I also got to meet Gabriel Narciso.
He started by asking me if I was still into open source. Of
course! He then asked me if there was a native version of
OpenOffice.org for Mac OS X. I remember OpenOffice.org used
to support the Mac, so I should be able to find one. =) Good deed! I
told _him_ about my BHAGs too. It turned out that he used to work at
Franklin-Covey (as in, _the_ Franklin Covey franchise in the
Philippines!), and is now into executive coaching.

Wow!

Let's say that again. Wow!

_That's_ why you should practice talking about your BHAGs until you
can squeeze it into a small-talk conversation. Joey Gurango told us
how wannabe entrepreneurs would give him two-inch-thick business
proposals and expect him to have the time or interest in reading them.
He said that's entirely the wrong way to do that. You start with your
90-second elevator pitch. You get people interested. Then you go for
your executive summary--the shorter, the better. You get people
hooked. When you get them hooked, _then_ you hit them with the
business proposal.

BHAGs work the same way. Refine them until you get a sound bite. Say
it with confidence and passion. Get them hooked. Explain the rest over
lunch another day!

コンピューターが使えたらもっとお金をもらえるかもしれないのに。 They might pay me more if I could use a computer.

Revolutionize computer science education by making it highly
individualized and experiential.

Become a world-famous expert on creating systems for planning one's
life. Instead of pushing a particular methodology, I'd like to work
with people's current ways of planning, suggesting improvements and
software/hardware to support their life.

5. Hipster PDA: Month view

Being able to quickly see my schedule for two months totally, totally
rocks. My iPAQ didn't have the screenspace for something like that,
but my 3x5" pack of index cards with some inserts from an organizer.
In particular, aforementioned monthly templates make planning
get-togethers so much easier. I can print index cards for these too,
but then it'd be a hassle to design the template and print it
back-to-back. Anyway, this totally rocks.

(I also had another epiphany earlier: we're actually planning
gimmicks! We have a social life! We have a barkada! Nifty. Now I just
need to make sure I keep in touch with other people I know, too...)

4. Sticky notes hack

43 folders is collecting neat Post-it hacks. I love using Post-it notes to organize my articles and presentations, writing down keywords on individual notes and rearranging them until they make sense. I like using thin strips for keywords and larger notes for storyboards. I like being able to see everything at a glance and rearrange things without having to navigate using a keyboard or a mouse. Post-it notes are a great way to put together impromptu presentations, too. Just stick them onto the back of a folder and peel them off as you discuss the points; that way, you don't forget to discuss anything. Great stuff! I should add a pack to my Geek Survival Kit (a pack of 3x5 index cards and a black gel pen).

1. Lifehacks: Doing my mail on the train

If I leave work right after the clock chimes at 5:30, I almost always
manage to get a seat on the train going home. This means I can do my
mail and a little bit of blogging besides. I aim to answer all of my
personal mail and acknowledge all other mail needing my action on the
day I receive them.

The train I transfer to is crowded, though, and I don't have my
one-handed keyboard set up yet. (Need to recompile my kernel.) During
then, I loop over my Japanese review materials. Headset + laptop is an
excellent combination!

2. Lifehacks: talking versus writing

I spend two hours every day talking to my mom and Dominique over
http://www.skype.com . I've come to look forward to these daily
conversations. When I stayed at Ayase Kokusai Hotel, I went to a
cybercafe just to keep in touch. Voice chats provide an immediacy far
beyond instant messaging or e-mail. My blog entries have become fewer
and fewer because I've already told my stories to the people who ask
me for personal updates the most. If I write before I talk to them,
the half-conversation is unnerving. These conversations end late at
night, and I have no time to write afterwards.

However, talking has its disadvantages. I don't have to think about
what happened. I just have to relate it. I can stutter. I can ramble.
I can say things of no real lasting value. I can be lazy.

Writing requires more effort. I have to structure my thoughts. I have
to figure out what useful tidbit I can extract from events so that my
blog isn't just some self-centered personal journal that makes
everyone feel a bit like a voyeur. Writing is slow, and the extra time
forces me to think about what I'm writing, perhaps gaining more
insights.

Conversation seems to be personality-centered. I can get away with
unpolished thoughts and trivial stories because the point of
conversation is conversing. On the other hand, writing--at least in my
point of view--is more idea-centered. When I write, I have to make
sense not only to people who are already interested in my life, but
also people who read this entry as part of something else, like the
RSS aggregator at http://pinoytechscene.mparaz.com . When I write, I
have to make sense most of the time.

As much as I enjoy talking to Mom and Dominique, then, I think it's
better if I refocus on the written word.

What will happen if I do so? My mother will probably write me letters,
but I think my father is more comfortable with the immediacy of voice
chat. I like hearing my dad's stories. They're the kind that should be
told as soon as possible. E-mail creates distance, and probably won't
do the stories justice.

People might also interpret this as me trying to distance myself from
them. It really isn't. I think of this as creating knowledge,
something that will reach more people, something I can reflect on
later.

I write to find out how the words on my screen differ from the words
in my head. I write to discover questions and answers. Journal entries
give my day structure and keep me moving forward.

Along those lines, I will not respond to "Hi", "Good evening", or
similar messages over instant messaging. If you have a story to tell,
just tell it without any preamble or small talk. That way, I don't
have to pretend I'm paying attention, and you won't get offended if I
disappear in the middle of a conversation.

I'd love to hear about any questions, comments, suggestions or links that you might have. Your comments will not be posted on this website immediately, but will be e-mailed to me first. You can use this form to get in touch with me, or e-mail me at [email protected] .

Page: Life Hacks

Updated: 2005-09-01

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